On 2/18/08, Mike Tintner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I believe I offered the beginning of a v. useful way to conceive of this > whole area in an earlier post. > > The key concept is "inventory of the world." > > First of all, what is actually being talked about here is only a > VERBAL/SYMBOLIC KB. > > One of the grand illusions of a literature culture is that words/symbols > refer to everything. The reality is that we have a v. limited verbal > inventory of the world. Words do not describe most parts of your body, for > example, only certain key divisions. Check over your hand for a start and > see how many bits you can name - minute bit by bit. When it comes to the > movements of objects, our vocabulary is breathtakingly limited. > > In fact, our verbal/symbolic inventory of the world (as provided for by our > existing cultural vocabulary - for all its millions of words) is, I suggest, > only a tiny fraction of our COMMON SENSE KB/ inventory of the world - i.e. > that knowledge we hold purely in sensory image form - and indeed in > common-sense form (since as Tye points out, we never actually > experience/operate one sense in isolation - even though we have the > intellectual illusion that we do). > > When we learn to respect the extent of our true common sense knowledge of > the world as distinct from our formal, verbal knowledge of the world, we > will realise another major reason why CYC like projects are doomed. They > have nothing to do with common sense. Of course they will never be able to > work out, pace Minsky, whether you can whistle and eat at the same time, or > whether you can push or pull an object with a string. This is true common > sense knowledge.
I can give labels to every tiny sub-section of my hand, thus increasing the "resolution" of the symbolic description. If I give labels to each very small visual features of my hand, then the distinction between visual representation and symbolic representation disappears. Therefore, I think symbolic KBs like Cyc's is not doomed -- the symbolic KB can merge with perceptual grounding in a "continuum" fashion. YKY ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=95818715-a78a9b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
